This past Saturday under the shade of the city pavilion, I had the pleasure of meeting Mary Scutter of Port Gibson.

For about 30 minutes, we talked about our families, church, and Mississippi history. We both grew up in small towns — me in Paris, Texas, and her in Port Gibson. We are both closer to our father’s than mothers but agreed that mothers and children share a more special connection. We both speak our mind.

The only difference I could tell — other than I’m about half her age — is that Mary Scutter is black, and I’m white.

I probably would not have had the chance to meet her if it hadn’t been for Vicksburg’s annual Racial Harmony picnic at the pavilion. Yet so many people of my pasty complexion didn’t take the time to walk through the crowd at the park.

By my estimate, there were probably 200 black people of all ages at the park when I got there. I think I was white person No. 9 or 10. Maybe a dozen of us.

Here we were on a neutral site at a church-sponsored event where strangers could get to know each other, and hardly anyone from one side showed up. How depressing.

“What I’m thinking,” I told Scutter. “is that it’s hard to have a racial harmony picnic without any white people.”

“We’ve come a long way, but not as far as I thought we would in my lifetime,” Scutter responded.

Unlike me, Scutter went to a segregated high school. She told me she was a sophomore at Addison High School in Port Gibson 1964 when thousands of civil rights workers came to Mississippi.

Her father, I gathered from our conversation, wasn’t so keen on the movement and didn’t want her getting involved with mostly white civil rights workers.

Yet here she was 50 years later sitting with me and discussing the progress of racial harmony.

“We’ve just got to keep praying and believing and having people like me and you work on it,” she said.

Then we agreed that people, in general, don’t like change.

Eventually, I had to leave and come into the office for my weekend shift. When I did, I couldn’t help but feel sad for everyone who missed out on meeting someone like Mary Scutter. Someone who on the surface might appear to them to be so different yet be so much the same.

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Josh Edwards is a reporter and can be reached by email at josh.edwards@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.